Investigative journalist
Mervyn Hagger is an investigative journalist whose work is closely associated with The John Lilburne Research Institute (for Constitutional Studies). The history of the Institute is the story of serendipity because it began as an accidental outgrowth of broadcasting ventures during 1985. (For further information concerning the history of the John Lilburne Research Institute prior to its rebirth after the year 2000, use the 'Four Freedoms' button to right. It links to an external site that is not connected with the current operation of the John Lilburne Research Institute.)
The legal frustration caused by the unsuccessful attempt to launch those radio stations resulted in the chance reading of a work by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. This primary article was about John Lilburne and his inspirational contribution to the document that became the United States Constitution. Further research revealed that Lilburne and Jefferson were related through the Randolph family. All of this has been related many times before and it has been published in various articles.
The John Lilburne Research Institute was recreated and reestablished following collaboration between Eric Gilder (see button, right) and Mervyn Hagger and the publication of 'London My Hometown' It first appeared as academic article following expansion from an earlier symposium. This article was then incorporated into a book by Dr. Gilder ('Mass Media Moments'), and it is now being revised, updated and expanded into a new book edited by both Gilder and Hagger: 'Distant Drums Across the Atlantic'. Following publication of this initial article as a collaborative work between Gilder and Hagger, other articles relating to research by the John Lilburne Research Institute have been published in various academic journals.
Distant Drums Across the Atlantic, began as an extension of two previous JLRI articles: Prophecies of Dystopic ‘Old World, New World’ Transitions Told: ‘The World Tomorrow’ Radio Broadcasts to the United Kingdom, 1965-1967; and Puppets on Stings (The origins of Radio Caroline). However, this planned single volume soon mushroomed into a trilogy, and after several revised publication dates, it is now hoped that volume one will be published in late 2010.
Distant Drums Across the Atlantic is intended to set the theme for further academic publications because it follows the original thread that led to the formation of this new phase of the John Lilburne Research Institute. That thread took off with fibers going in several directions, but the first strand led to an understanding of the real motivation for the so-called 'pirate radio stations' of the Nineteen Sixties, because it led to an understanding of a propaganda war between promoters of a commercial and confederate United Europe, versus detractors of a political-military federal United States of Europe. In Paris after WWII, the CIA began publication of an academic magazine called Encounter which promoted commercial unification, and it appears to have also funded a polemical broadcast called The World Tomorrow which was heard daily over most of the offshore stations in order to stimulate a fear over the possible creation of a federal United States of Europe.
Caught up in this Orwellian scheme were the youth of the day who were listening to the popular music that propelled the offshore stations into gaining audiences running into the millions. Distant Drums Across The Atlantic will explore this episode in depth, while following a thread that leads to the question of how we are governed: as citizens or as subjects? Since neither Hagger or Gilder are academic historians, they have taken a different approach with this work by using their experience in investigative journalism (Hagger), and political science (Gilder), together with their shared knowledge of the development of mass communication.
The three volumes of Distant Drums Across The Atlantic will show how the teens and early twenties of the Twentieth Century were manipulated by means of religion and music via broadcasting, in order to do the bidding of politicians of an older generation. Rather than show a hodge-podge, uncoordinated youth rebellion at work, this trilogy will demonstrate how political machines used youth to serve political ends by militaristic means. But it goes much further: it rolls back the hands of time to reveal a pattern of subjugation by the majority, in order to serve a minority of the populace holding power, who have used a mixture of superstition, fear and brute force in order to achieve their own ends. This work will not show a perfect conspiracy in operation, but various plans with many pitfalls and pratfalls that often backfired upon its directors. However, its primary objective is to show the historical record of subjugation that eventually led to the quest by John Lilburne in his struggle to depose all forms of mass slavery, and to establish freeborn rights in the name of individuality as a matter of fundamental law.